A Green Solution to Climate Change: The Hybrid Approach to Crediting Reductions in Tropical Deforestation

Abstract

"Global climate change is a multi-faceted international crisis that requires creative and flexible regulatory solutions. Addressing the principal anthropogenic cause of climate change—carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels—has been the focus of the international response to global climate change to date. However, a significant and often overlooked source of global carbon dioxide emissions is deforestation, which accounts for up to eighteen percent of global carbon dioxide emissions annually. Tropical forests store 120-400 tons of carbon per square hectare of vegetation, which is released into the atmosphere when the forests are burned or harvested. The critically important role that forests play in international carbon release and storage has been a recent focus of negotiations of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Kyoto Protocol in Bali, Indonesia and Poznan, Poland. The Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, and negotiations for the terms of its successor are underway as of this writing. A focus of these negotiations is that it is essential to establish regulatory mechanisms to help curb emissions from tropical deforestation in any effective post-Kyoto plan to combat global climate change."